An organisation is a structure that formalises a connection between individuals; the boundary within which people complete tasks to reach an end goal. The organisation as the whole is the sum of the individuals. The learning of an organisation is determined by the learning of the individuals. Organisations need to continue to learn and retain that learning, their skills and abilities, to sustain their position in the dynamic marketplace.
Learning organisations can be described by their skills, which have to be developed. Garvin lists these as skills in systematic problem solving, experimentation, learning from past experience and best practices of others and transferring this knowledge quickly across the organisation (Burgelman, Christensen, Wheelwright, 2004)。 The individual learning leads to organisational learning and there is a need to ensure this contributes to sustainable competitiveness.
The learning organisation or learning needs of the organisation can start to evolve and be driven from the early stages of strategic analysis. When the opportunities in the SWOT model are identified it highlights areas where new knowledge, intelligence or insight has to be created or combined in order to take hold of these opportunities. Threats indicate what knowledge areas the organisation is leaving itself open to and learning can help to reduce the threats.
Threats are events or activities that occur in the macro and microenvironments. Competitors, consumer changes, and economic trends are examples of sources of these threats to the organisation. Identifying threats at an early stage places the organisation in a knowledgeable position to counteract, minimise or convert the threats. Weaknesses identified in the SWOT can be viewed and handled similarly.
STRATEGIC AND OPERATIONAL LEARNING
In exploring organisational learning a strategic and operational view is taken. At the strategic level, the identification of the strategic organisational goals as drivers for learning have to be aligned with those of the individual to ensure value to both, as the individual will tend to learn faster if there is benefit to them as well as benefit to the organisation. Learning within the organisation helps to expand the ability of the organisation to maximise its opportunities.
The initial questions, for any organisation exploring where they are in becoming a learning organisation, are：
·What do individuals learn in the organisation?
·What determines how they learn?
·Which mechanisms are used to help learning?
·Which individuals are going to do the learning and how is this learning facilitated?
In addition, who will influence all of these factors - for example, will the owners dictate what is to be learned, the internal leaders or managers, the group or team structure. The strategy of the organisation should be the driver of the learning and through goal alignment will guide this learning.
At the strategic level the leadership perspective on learning is to influence not interfere. Leaders should establish the environments, culture and facilities for creative learning without interfering with the learning processes. Transformational type leaders, as considered under change management classifications, are the ones that tend to be able to create a learning organisation. These types of leaders are suitable for this as they are leaders who are there at a time of change, when the highest level of learning is required.
At the operational level, time and effort has to be put in to network development. Network development is the identification and facilitation of social networks in the organisation. This should result in the creation of networks of people and an understanding of how people really communicate and share knowledge within the various areas of the organisation. Methods should then be identified as to how these networks can crossover, integrate and share each network's knowledge. For the networks to perform - ie for the individuals in the various groups or social networks to be able to learn - problem-solving activities, learning events and integrated systems are required. These activities or learning processes help to incorporate the knowledge into the social networks and embed it in the organisation.
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